Strapi CronStrapi Cron

Creating a cron in Strapi for adding short links to articles

I was searching for a service to shorten my URLs for social sharing links and found short.io which offer a free plan with perfect rest API.

There can 2 approaches to add a corn job in Strapi:

  • Use Strapi native cron feature (which I failed to run after multiple attempts)
  • Use OS crontab and configure cli based jobs outside Strapi (the approach I am using for my URL shortener cron)

  1. Create a CLI command in Strapi

    • Install node short.io sdk
    yarn add short.io
npm install short.io
    • Add required configurations in .env file:
    # your short.io short domain
URL_SHORTENER_DOMAIN=go.adapttive.com

# your short.io short domain id
URL_SHORTENER_DOMAIN_ID=12345

# your short.io API key with all access
URL_SHORTENER_API_KEY=xxxx

# your website base URL to be shortened
URL_SHORTENER_BLOG_URL=https://adapttive.com/blog/
    • Create a command file in your strapi project (Ex: /home/ubuntu/strapi/cli/shortener.js):
    #!/usr/bin/env node
const strapi = require('strapi');

if (process.env.CRON_URL_SHORTENER) {
  strapi().load().then(
    async (instance) => {
      // fetch articles to add short URL for mongo db (refer to strapi documentation in references for MySQL query)
      const articles = await instance.query('article').model.find({
        shortUrl: null,
        published_at: {$ne: null}
      }, ['slug', 'shortUrl']);

      if (articles.length > 0) {
        const shortio = require("short.io");
        const short = new shortio(process.env.URL_SHORTENER_DOMAIN, process.env.URL_SHORTENER_DOMAIN_ID, process.env.URL_SHORTENER_API_KEY);
        for (const article of articles) {
          let link = await short.createLink({originalURL: process.env.URL_SHORTENER_BLOG_URL + article.slug});
          // secureShortURL: 'https://go.adapttive.com/eMEe5R',
          if (link && link.secureShortURL) {
            console.log("slug:", article.slug);
            console.log("shortUrl:", link.secureShortURL);
            const result = await instance.query('article').model.updateOne(
              {_id: article.id},
              {$set: {"shortUrl": link.secureShortURL}}
            );
          }
        }
      }
      console.log("url added:", articles.length);
      // exit with 0 code
      instance.stop(0)
    }
  )
}
    • Make shortener.js executable:
    sudo chmod +x shortener.js
    • Add the command to your Strapi project package.json as shortener:
    {
  "name": "api-cms-adapttive-com",
  "private": true,
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "description": "A Strapi application",
  "scripts": {
    "develop": "strapi develop",
    "start": "strapi start",
    "build": "strapi build",
    "strapi": "strapi",
    "shortener": "node cli/shortener.js"
  }
}

  2. Setting the CLI command in crontab

    • Create log folder and file
    mkdir -p /var/log/strapi
touch /var/log/strapi/cron.log
    • Add command in os crontab
    crontab -e
    • Copy and paste the below in crontab:
    0 8 * * * export CRON_URL_SHORTENER=1 && cd /home/ubuntu/strapi && yarn shortener |& tee -a /var/log/strapi/cron.log

References